A Song of Sovngarde
by cxjenious
Summary: They landed at Sea Dragon Point. Nords, they called themselves, tall, fair, and hardy warriors all. Almost 200 years after landing, the untested but beloved Hilda Ysmir has risen to rule over the Nords. In the game of thrones, you win or you die, and by Shor, she means to win. But the Nords have old enemies far beyond the ken of men, and dark things stir in the forgotten realms...
1. Hilda

**_Disclaimer:_** I own neither ASOIAF nor The Elder Scrolls.

 _ **Author Note:**_ Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to A Song of Sovngarde. Please remain seated at all times, and keep your hands inside the vehicle.

* * *

 ** _Hilda_**

The cold wind needled Hilda's bare arms, like a thousand icy pinpricks. She inhaled the frigid air until her lungs burned, blinked, and felt tears trickle slowly down her cheeks. _I shouldn't cry,_ she thought. _Tears are useless._

And yet, the tears still came, one after the other, marching cold trails down her face.

To the west, a hundred coves and inlets blanketed in grey-green moss cradled the endless western sea. Jagged mountains rose in the northeast, beyond the hilly Wolfswood, fading from grey to white as they climbed past the Wall into the frozen far north. Surrounded by ancient spruce and ironwood, enshrouded in mist, eyes clenched shut, Hilda saw neither the sea nor the mountains nor the sky, but she could feel them, hear them, as surely as she could feel the thin wool of her gown brushing against her skin, hear her heart thundering in her chest.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

 _Death has claimed one of your blood,_ the sea had whispered to her the week before, as she stood upon the beach and watched the dark waves break green and white against the rocky, moss wreathed outcroppings. _And death comes for you,_ the mountains had rumbled. The sky only ever told her to rejoice, even when black and angry, alight with blinding fury. In each of them she saw Kyne, the mother of all Nords, the master of all elements. She could feel the goddess reaching into her soul, speaking directly into her heart.

 _Death comes for you,_ she heard again. _Rejoice._

The morning was cold and crisp, the wind biting, the sky grey and somber. Hilda's breath misted in the air, and as she listened for new omens, as the crows sang their mournful song, and the waves churned, more tears marched down her cheeks.

Her grandfather was dead, as had been foretold by the sea. His bones and belongings had arrived with the dawn, ferried across the Narrow Sea by her cousin and Thane, Thorfinn Deathbrand.

But that was not all she wept for; she was alone now, and though she had rarely known his counsel, her grandfather had always been there, just at the edge of her thoughts, out of sight but never entirely out of mind.

Her cousin and housecarl, Gunnar, who had returned west with Thorfinn, told her that her grandfather had killed a hundred men before one of them put a sword through his belly. He said that Old Vjorn had shouted them to death even as his innards seeped out of him, crushed them beneath the weight of his mace and the might of his thu'um. Gunther spun an equally tall tale that Vjorn was drunk on mead and still buried in a woman when the battle came, tit in one hand, mace in the other.

No matter how grand the tale, the end came the same. Her grandfather was dead. She had known it since the sea warned her, but seeing his bones made it real. _He sups in the halls of Sovngarde now,_ she thought solemnly, as the wind twisted about her bare feet and sent her gown aflutter. Sovngarde was home to all Nords who died valiantly; the vast castle-city she ruled had been named for it.

 _That's why he went east,_ she told herself. _So that he might achieve glory and spend eternity with our fallen kin in Shor's hall._ Hilda had been sad, at first, when Thorfinn had brought his bones to her, but now, in the forest, as she cried beneath the uncaring gray sky, blonde tresses wisping in the wind, her sadness and frustration turned to anger, for now she would have to bear the weight of the dead and the living all alone.

 _So many titles,_ she thought. She was the Keeper of Sovngarde, the Dovahkiin, the chosen of Shor, the blessed of Kyne, the Hero-God Ysmir made flesh. Queen of all Nords, both dead and alive. The Dovahjud. She had assumed the titles when her grandfather went east seven years hence, taken her vows before the godly faces atop Seventree Hill and sworn her soul to Shor and Kyne and all the Dovakiinne of the past. She had been all of eleven, but the bone-grinding weight of duty had been shared with her grandfather. Now the pressure and responsibilities and expectations were as anvils chained to her ankles and wrists and wrapped about her neck, strangling her, crippling her, crushing her.

 _Damn him,_ she thought, taking another deep breath that swelled her chest. She scented pine in the air, felt cool earth beneath her feet. The wind rose to a piercing whistle, swept green-gold spruce and pine needles from their branches, sent them fluttering to the forest floor. A queer sound rose up out of the shadows, a low rumble like quaking stone. For a moment her breath stopped, mind leaping to the harrowing tales she had heard shared amongst her people, of draugr and daedra. _They're dead and gone,_ she told herself, heart quickening. _Or far away besides, beyond sea and ice._

She looked out into the forest. The mist stretched and coiled through the woods like ghostly fingers. Glowing yellow eyes stared at her through the fog, dozens of glittering topaz gems that shined as bright and golden as the moon. She recognized them immediately.

 _Gods damned wolves. Can I get no peace?_ There were half a dozen that she could see; all of Jorrvaskr, no doubt. Even wolves born outside the clan took up residence in their mountain holdfasts. The small pack prowled the gauzy shadows, utterly silent as they encircled her, except for the rumbling growls, low and constant.

She palmed her sword. The leather grip was cold to the touch. Her grandfather had had the blade commissioned for her shortly before her thirteenth year, after her first bleeding. It was a beautiful weapon; the long length of ice-blue steel was patterned with mesmerizing ripples and etched with ancient Nordic runes. The black gem set in its gilded pommel didn't shine so much as it absorbed light, a dark abyss fashioned into a jewel.

 _I have another sword now,_ she thought. An even greater sword, called Miraak. It had been passed down since time immemorial, before the Sons of Snow had braved the treacherous seas of the nether. Thorfinn had presented it to her, sheathed in a white lion's pelt, but she hadn't the heart to wield it, so it sat in the vaults with her grandfather's spoils of war; great chests of gold and silver, jewels and gems, diamonds, pearls, finery, tapestries, weapons, dozens of spices, and half a hundred other things, from bolts of cloth to egregiously bejeweled boots. Thorfinn had brought back her grandfather's women as well, little more than bedwarmers, the lot of them. _And all with child. I would send them back east elsewise. Grandmother will not approve._

They would be her aunts and uncles, those children, and they would never truly know their father, save through her, until they died themselves. Her grief slithered back, slowly, tinged with a sort of hopeless despair. Her lips trembled.

"Leave me to my sorrow," she commanded the wolves, seizing the annoyance their presence wrought, using it to stifle her mounting dolor. At the sound of her voice, a stillness fell over them; their breath rose to join the fog, mixing in the chill air. The largest of them, a broad-shouldered, copper furred she-wolf, crept closer.

"Leave," Hilda said again, scowling. "You need not know my wrath on this day." If her breath hitched, the wolves gave no indication that they had heard. But they did not move.

Hilda pulled her sword free and the steel sang. "Hircine could always use more beasts for his hunts," she threatened. "Perhaps I should send you to him."

The she-wolf crept closer, head bent low. Her shoulders reached as high as Hilda's chest, and her teeth were like curved daggers. Her claws could rip through flesh and bone with ease.

She was a fearsome beast true, but not so fearsome as Hilda. The young queen bared her teeth and raised her blade as if to swing. The tip caught on a lone beam of light, glimmered; the she-wolf, a killer of men and beasts alike, rolled to her back and let out a long keening whine.

Hilda dropped her sword arm and huffed. "Fine, Maela. You may stay. The rest of you leave. _Now_."

Sulking, whining, snapping at each others heels, the pack left her, fading into the mist like ghosts. Hilda waited until the dark shapes were completely gone before she spoke.

"Jarl Wulfgar sent you?"

For a long moment, the only sound was shifting bone. Hilda watched the beast shift and shrink, fur shedding, bones snapping, melding, reshaping beneath the skin. The wicked claws melted into fingers. It had been fascinating, once upon a time, to watch a wolf transform, but Hilda had long since lost the girlish delight she once felt at witnessing the ancient magic. It was almost rote, now.

"No," answered Maela Jorrvaskr, when the change was done. Hilda was tall, but even she had to look up at Maela. The warrior-woman had strong, almost masculine features, but her lips were plump, and the curves of her well muscled body left little doubt as to her femininity. "I came of my own volition, as soon as I heard about Vjorn."

Maela dipped her head in respect, then stepped closer to Hilda, the mist clinging to her naked form. Her thick red mane hung down her back, riddled with pine needles and bits of bark, and her pale skin was patterned with winding tattoos from her shoulders to her feet.

She opened her mouth. "Have you-"

"No, not yet," Hilda said, already knowing what Maela was about to ask. "I would properly mourn his life before I seek him out in death. Though I hardly knew him."

Maela frowned. "Your grandfather loved you more than you could ever know."

"Then why has he abandoned me when I need him most?" _His wisdom, his sword. His name, and the history behind it. I need them all. Especially now._

"He did not abandon you, my lady." The sun peeked out from the grey cover of clouds that dominated the sky; rays of light trickled through the trees, painting the brown earth in streaks of gold. "He sups in Sovngarde now. His counsel is yours, until-"

"Until I walk the halls of Sovngarde myself. I know, Maela. I'm the Keeper, now. The only Keeper. I _know_. Even now I can feel him. He sits with the gods, sups at their table, with his kinsmen and his ancestors. He is... happy."

"Then go and see him," Maela urged. "There is no need to mourn him. Celebrate him instead, for the great life he lived and the glorious death he sought. Eternity is his now. Rejoice."

 _She does not understand_ , Hilda thought, even as her spine tingled at the reminder of Kyne's words. _None of them do_. _Not her, not mother…_ Sovngarde was all her people seemed to care for, save for the wolves: Upon death, they were claimed by Hircine, Lord of the Hunt.

Nords lived and loved and died to reach Shor's Hall, to live amongst their ancestors and kinsmen, drinking and fighting their way through eternity. _But life is more than death._ Hilda wanted more than that. Needed more than that. She preferred the castle Sovngarde in the living realm, as opposed to the great hall of death that her seat had been named after.

She wondered what Helsif would say, to see her weeping, and as if a door had been closed, her tears ceased.

"He is of little use to me in Sovngarde," she said. "We live in the realm of men, not spirits. The northern and southron lords cannot reach him in Sovngarde. They respected him, respected his word, his sword-"

"His blood," said Maela. "You are of his blood."

Hilda nodded. "That and more. We share a soul."

"Then why do you weep? I watched the Hagraven pull you from your mother's womb. Saw the high priests bless you. I have known you since your first breath. Never once have I seen you cry."

Hilda pushed her thick golden braids over her shoulder and started to pace, back and forth, back and forth. Her grandfather had worn his hair like hers, braided and wrapped in strips of leather, in the Nordic tradition. It was another reminder of what she had lost, and what she yet stood to lose.

"Magnus sent word from King's Landing," she began. "The king's Hand is dead, and the king himself rides north for Winterfell as we speak, presumably to appoint our liege as his new Hand." She felt a twinge of pain in her palms, and only just realized how tightly she was clenching her fists. "He means to take Wulfric hostage."

Maela loosed a rumbling growl, fingers lengthening into claws, teeth growing into fangs. "I won't allow it," she ground out, voice deep and guttural. "I will rip him to pieces if he tries, and feast on his fat, kingly flesh."

 _The decision isn't yours to make._ "You won't ask why he wants Wulfric as a hostage?"

Maela shook her head. "It does not matter. He cannot have him." Doubt crept into her amber eyes. "Right?"

Hilda wished it were that easy. "Thorunn wed Daenarys Targaryen," she said. "The Mad King's daughter. Thorfinn suspects that he has pledged his men to help Viserys Targaryen claim his birthright, the very throne that Robert Baratheon sits. A throne that we helped sit him on."

Maela dropped her head. "Aye, I know, I was there. I fought alongside your father. Stood with him, when he died."

Hilda smiled. Her mother had told her the story dozens of times, of how her father had fallen against the white knight, Ser Barristan the Bold, on the banks of the Ruby Ford. Ser Barristan had been half dead himself after their clash, but Robert Baratheon had ordered his wounds cleaned and sutured, and had maesters nurse him back to health.

"And I thank you for that, Maela. I always have and I always will." She leaned against a crooked ironwood, the bark still damp with morning frost, and her smiled turned melancholic. "Thorunn has warred his entire life. He was weaned on war; it is all he has ever known or desired. He yearns for it as a hungry babe yearns for mother's milk." She looked down at her hands, as if she might find enlightenment in the lines of her palms. "I imagine he's somewhere fighting now; a pitched battle against sellswords, a tavern brawl, in a of the slavers' arenas."

Maela almost snarled. "And knowing the sort of man Thorunn is, you still mean to send Wulfric south. To let him be taken. Your _brother_."

Hilda swallowed her own anger, but just barely. She had near as raised Wulfric herself, for all that she was only a few years older. "For now. I can do little else."

Maela was silent for a very long while. "And what of Thorunn?" she asked finally, almost painfully. Thorunn, like her, was of Clan Jorrvaskr, though he had spent most of his life in the far east. They were blood kin, and no Nord would ever wish ill on their own blood. But still, Maela asked, "Will you perform the Sacrament?"

Hilda was reluctant to use the Black Hand against her own people, but she could not ignore the danger Thorunn represented. She had to keep Wulfric safe as best she could. "If no other option presents itself."

"You will find another way. You're a clever girl, and tenacious. You've your mother's wit."

"Thorunn cares nothing for my wit. He only respects strength."

"Aye, he does. But you have that too."

"Only just. My grandfather could have stopped him. Curbed his stupidity, or his lust, whichever led him to wed the Targaryen girl. King Robert trusted my grandfather. Loved him. Even if Vjorn couldn't have stopped Thorunn, he could have dissuaded the king from taking Wulfric, reassured him, _something_. King Robert has neither trust nor love for me, for all that my father died for him. If Thorunn makes an attempt for the throne my brother will die." She looked towards the heavens as the wind picked up. A lonely howl reached her ears. "Now do you see how my grandfather abandoned me? He couldn't have died at a worse time."

"If King Robert kills Wulfric, he and his won't be long for this world," Maela promised. "Every Nord would take up arms, old and young alike. We would burn this land to ash."

 _Some of it,_ Hilda thought _. But not all. Westeros is too large._ "You asked why I weep? I weep because I am afraid. Because I am angry, and frustrated, and alone. Because I don't know what to do, or where to turn. My people know war. We know death. But for the two centuries we've lived here, for the families we've wed and the seas we've explored, we are still strangers to this land. Outsiders, to all the lords below the Neck. A war with the crown would spell our demise. Thorunn must know this."

"He knows that with our full strength, and his full strength, we could carve ourselves a great portion of this land. The North, the Iron Islands, the West... all could be ours. Call upon the Blood Flower, and the rangers, and all the Nords who went south. You need not fear a war against the throne."

"I would rather stop war, not encourage it."

Maela scoffed. "We are Nords. We aren't meant to stop wars. We are meant to end them."

Hilda said nothing to that, standing quietly for several breaths before she turned away to start the long, familiar trek back to Sovngarde.

The trail twisted for a little over a mile through dense woods and sparse, wet meadows, out into the misty, moss covered bog. There the trail died and the road began. Maela shifted back to her wolf form and trotted behind her, padding silently through the undergrowth. Hilda heard the other wolves return, heard their yips and snarls, but they kept to the trees; she was equally irked and touched by their devotion, and glad for their discretion. There was no telling who they might happen upon on the road; a single massive wolf was one thing, but a whole pack? There would be a panic.

The bog soil was moist and spongy, and she had to step lightly lest she sink into the muck, until she reached the solid road. She saw what looked like moose tracks cutting across the trail. Two of the wolves stopped to sniff at the them, then took off deeper into the woods.

The road was wide, pitched in places and cobbled in others, with ditches dug along the sides for rainwater, markers for distance, and bridges that arced over the more treacherous stretches of the bogs where the soil was too soft to tread. It stretched east for over a hundred leagues, dotted here and there with small villages and hamlets, cutting through the Wolfswood and all the way to Winterfell.

And there, looming beyond the humped bogs, half shrouded in mist, was the mighty Sovngarde. It looked like nothing so much as a mountain from this distance, veiled as it was by thick fog.

She wondered, as she walked towards the distant fortress, if her grandmother might want to visit her brother and nephews at the Rills, and if her mother would return now from Dawnfort, in the far North. Wulfric would want to see her, she knew. No doubt he had heard by now what the king had demanded of him. The Hrothgar would have told him at the first opportunity.

Every hour or so, she came upon a rumbling wagon or wayn as it made its way down the road. Traders and merchants traveled absent guards on the Blackstone Road, for even before the roads had been built, Hilda's five times great grandfather, Thorvard the Mighty - who had wed Sarra Stark and sired Helga the Heavenly, the third Dovahkiin to rule Sovngarde - had tasked his warriors with regularly patrolling the lands as far east as the western fork of the White Knife.

The travelers, as she came upon them, called out blessings and prayers, for her, her father, and her grandfather. They forced gifts upon her, as it was considered a bad omen amongst Nords, traders and merchants especially, to not share their wares with the Dovahkiin. It was considered an even worse omen for the Dovahkiin to reject them.

She received a lovely tan mare from the first merchant she came across, a tall, well-wrinkled woman with stark white hair named Agatha. She refused to let Hilda walk barefoot all the way to Sovngarde, and berated Maela for not offering her own back to ride.

"Shor's beard!" the woman had exclaimed upon recognizing Hilda. "Dovahjud, you mustn't ruin those lovely feet of yours on this hard earth! And you, wolf! What use are you, eh? A shame to the Jorrvaskr name! Lord Markus should have you shaved. Take one of my horses, Dovahjud, please; I would be honored for you to ride her."

The second merchant gave her a beautiful shadowskin cloak, a deep black that was slashed with white; he was a ranger too, for she saw woven over his heart the face of Kyne. He scolded her for being out in the cold with little more than a sleeping gown.

"We Nords were born of the ice, it is true," he had said, his beard so thick that Hilda could hardly see his mouth move, "but that is no excuse to be out in your undergarments, Dovahkiin!"

The third merchant, another woman, heavy-set and almost as tall as Maela, gave her a thick, long-sleeved wool gown and a skin of sparkling wine; the fourth, a man in fox and ferret furs, cooked her a much needed meal of grilled leeks and cabbage, mutton, fried potatoes, and shrimp paste on hard bread. They washed down the meal with honeyed mead. The fifth gave her a silver brooch to fasten her cloak, and a ring with a beautifully cut garnet; the sixth, who rode with her two young sons, gave her a pair of sturdy boots to better spur her horse, but only after cleaning her feet and making her a rasher of whale bacon. She thanked each of them, genuinely, prayed with them and for them, blessed the woman's sons, and all the while the sun continued its slow journey through the eastern sky.

With the horse beneath her, who she decided to call Qonos, which meant lightning strike in Dov, she made much better time back to the castle-city. Maela seemed to enjoy the opportunity to run.

A few of the travelers Hilda came across weren't Nords though; she could smell their fear when they looked upon Maela, who, on four legs, looked like nothing so much as a direwolf with the musculature of a bear.

The fog was starting to clear. Beyond the wetlands and barry farms, Sovngarde thrust up out of the thinning brume. The castle had been built on the southern arm of Sea Dragon Point, atop ancient First Men ruins. The city spread neatly over a vast tract of land, in the center of which was a high hill crested by seven ancient weirwoods, left untouched after the Carving.

The Nords called it "Seventree Hill"; back during the reign of Ragnar Redbeard, a great hero and the son of the first Dovahkiin to rule, carpenters had carved the Nordic Gods into the bone white boles above the solemn faces of the northern Gods, only to watch them weep blood.

Thinking them some strange, northern magic, Ragnar had wanted the trees burned out root and stem, but a Northman showed him that the blood was only sap, and the wood was valuable, for it never rotted. After learning this, Ragnar cut down all but seven of the trees, and used the wood to fashion rafters, furniture, and weapons. His seven foot longbow still hung in Sovngarde's great hall, beneath rafters fashioned from the same trees.

The massive walls of Sovngarde, all black granite and as tall as spruce trees, rose out of the earth and stretched for a mile in either direction, with towers that were spaced every few hundred or so yards. Hilda smiled as the city came fully into view, for she cherished her people as much as they cherished her, despite the burden of her responsibilities. The din of the city was as a siren's song, calming her nerves and settling her thoughts. She smiled, almost overcome with love.

She knew, suddenly, exactly what she would do, how she would placate the king, how she would curb Thorunn's aggression. Nearer the city, she heard wrens and warblers chirping almost frantically, and Maela, sensing her changed mood, loped closer and yipped at her like some wet-behind-the-ears pup. Beneath the midday sun, the city seemed to glow, and even Qonos was unbothered by the massive wolf trotting at her side.

The smooth outer wall branched out from the barbican, with its turreted corners and dragon's head crenellations. Behind the stout structure was the city proper, whose tallest towers and buildings seemed as if to disappear into the heavens, standing proudly above a second inner wall that was even taller than the first. All the towers were crested with black iron, and black dragon banners rippled above the conical spires.

The portcullis, so wide that forty horseman abreast could comfortably ride through, was made of latticed steel. Two monstrous moats surrounded both the outer and inner city walls; each moat was several dozen feet deep and wide and lined with smooth round stones. Hilda saw otters knifing through the scum choked waters as she crossed the red oak bridge into the barbican. There was a loud splash; Hilda looked back and saw one of Maela's wolves frolicking in the water, chasing after them.

Sovngarde, she had heard spoken, was the grandest castle in all of the north, grander even then Harrenhal, some whispered, for the great builders who had sculpted the castle had put their souls into the stone and made it living, to be shaped as easily as clay, and giants and mammoths had set the living stone, stacked its mountainous walls and dizzying towers. It stretched across several thousand acres; if not the grandest castle, Hilda thought, it was certainly the grandest city. According to the many travelers who visited Sovngarde, only King's Landing and Oldtown were more populous.

The citizens and soldiers milling about at the main gate all bowed as she passed, giving blessings and condolences, and one of them asked if she might see fit to take a message to his dead kinsmen.

"Write down your message," she told him, and all the rest who might have been afraid to ask, already feeling the headache that would come when she ventured to Shor's Hall, "and the name of who you wish to receive it, and leave it for me at the temple."

The portcullis rattled and clanked its way shut; she continued across the second, longer bridge, and into Sovngarde, pushing Qonos into a gallop.

She had messages to send, and dead souls to visit.

 **/~/~/**


	2. Thorfinn

_**Disclaimer:**_ I own neither ASOIAF nor The Elder Scrolls.

 _ **Author Note:**_ This chapter contains some sexy at the end. If erotica turns your stomach, don't read it.

* * *

 _ **Thorfinn**_

"Bugger the king and bugger his demands," cursed Arlan Stormcloak, his gruff voice echoing in the vaulted council chambers. He paced beneath one of the seven bay windows that overlooked the Sunset sea, icy blue chainmail clanking as he stomped about. "Wulfric isn't the Dovahkiin, but the blood of Ysmir runs in his veins all the same. To give him up without a fight is to shame not only all Nords, but the gods as well!"

Seven great crystal chandeliers hung from the arched ceiling, positioned to catch and magnify the last rays of the sun as it was swallowed by the sea. The crystals glittered bright and golden, speckling the walls with motes of yellow light. Seven tapestries woven from dyed Naathi silk and cloth-of-gold hung between the windows. They stretched from ceiling to floor and depicted the gods in such intricate detail that they seemed as if to climb down from the tapestries and join the courtiers at the weirwood table. Thorfinn could almost taste the beads of sweetwater that trickled down Dibella's naked body, hear Shor shouting orders to his Thanes.

"There is no shame in acquiescing to the demands of a king," the Hrothgar said. Further down the table, Gildheim Blackbriar nodded in agreement. "Nor would I presume to speak for the gods. Such is Hilda's domain." He twirled his ash-white whiskers around a wrinkled finger. "Does Jarl Wulfgar share your sentiments?"

The Hrothgar was surprisingly soft spoken for so large a man. He sat at the head of the long table, robed in mottled blue and grey, his beard so long that he had to tuck it in his belt. Thorfinn had no worries as to which way the Hrothgar's opinion would fall – he had been Ralof Ysmir before he became the Hrothgar. During his youth, he had followed his cousin Vjorn Skullcrusher like a lost puppy, according to Gildheim. The Blackbriar lord had once told Thorfinn that Vjorn could have shat on a plate and called it a delicacy and Ralof would have eaten it with a smile on his face.

He was even more besotted with Hilda.

Arlan scowled, and Thorfinn tried not to sigh. Arlan had been arguing his point for what seemed like hours now, and only Lorheim Jorrvaskr, a greater warmonger than any scion of House Stormcloak, agreed with him. _But what can one expect from wolves and bears?_

Arlan had support from more than the weres, though. Word of the king's demand had spread through the city. The people were all too ready to go to war, Arlan especially. He was bred for it; it was said that the Stormcloak brothers had fallen from the womb armored in blue steel, with cruel axes fashioned from their mother's bones. Thorfinn had fought beside both of them in Essos, once as a boy and later as a man: He could attest to their battle prowess, but of the two, only Jarl Wulfgar seemed to have any sense.

Thorfinn wondered why the Jarl had sent his brother to serve on Hilda's council. Surely he had another relative who wasn't so stupid? _Who are you to doubt the mind of any man?_ a treacherous voice whispered in his ear.

He ignored it.

"We all feel the sting of shame," said Tsilda Dawnstar. "None of us, I think, more so than Lady Hilda herself. But you saw her when she returned to the city. She said she has a plan. I trust her, as all Nords have trusted her line since the World Eater cast our home to ruin."

If Thorfinn's heart hadn't already been claimed by another, he might have taken Tsilda for a wife. The lady knight, like most women of Dawnstar, was a great beauty and a supreme warrior, tall and strong, with blond hair so pale it was almost white. She was still unmarried, and acted as chaste as a maid, but her twins were evidence that she well knew the touch of a man. The seal of Meridia was like a brand on her sword hand.

Further down the table, seated with the representatives from the lesser houses, the massive blacksmith Balmir Graymane grunted his agreement.

"Aye," called out Sofie and Robar Darkbrother, as if speaking for him. "We trust the Dovahkiin."

"Aye," echoed Thranson Silveren.

Garlund Nightgale, however, a wily thief who was as quick with a dagger as the sun was bright, stood up and said, "I too, trust Lady Hilda. Her mind is as sharp as Miraak, for all that she is young, untested, and gentle besides. Still, I trust her."

Garlund paused as Arlan returned to his seat. Just as he was about to speak again, the black oak doors burst open, clanging against the walls. Lady Helsif stepped into the room, pale as bone, the billowing train of her blood-red gown carried by two little honey-skinned Naathi girls with eyes like molten gold. Tsilda scowled at Helsif, jaw clenched tight; for the briefest of moments, Thorfinn thought the lady knight might draw steel.

Meridia's chosen were ever enemies of creatures if the night.

Helsif claimed her seat across from Thorfinn, and the two girls scurried out, closing the chamber doors behind them. Her cruel red eyes swept across the gathered Nords before settling on Thorfinn.

"I never thanked you for gifting me those two, did I, Thorfinn?" _They weren't meant for you,_ the Thane thought. _They were meant for Lady Helena._ "They are such sweet girls, and dutiful too. I have come to love them as if they were my own." She bowed her head. "You have my eternal gratitude." Thorfinn wasn't sure if the emotion in her voice was feigned or not. With Helsif, it was impossible to know.

The mood in the vast room had been solemn before, with its dark stone walls and black marble floors, but now the tension seemed as if to strangle the very air, and sap the heat as well, for all of a sudden, the torches dimmed and Thorfinn felt a chill fell sweep over him.

His breath paused in his chest, and just as suddenly, the feeling left him.

He glanced around, but it appeared only he had witnessed the phenomenon. _That was a bad omen,_ he thought. _Or Helsif's soul has become even blacker since I was last here._

"It is this southron king whom I do not trust," Garlund continued, seemingly content to ignore the tension. "I was in King's Landing when he had his war against the false dragons. I was there when the bodies of Rhaegar's children were presented to him. He–"

Thorfinn, tired of the pointless debate, stood from his chair, and Garlund fell silent.

"This council did not convene to discuss whether or not to send Wulfric south," he began, in the same sort of hard voice that saw seasoned raiders and killers obey his every command. "Hilda has already decided. We know not to trust the king, as he is neither a Stark nor a Nord. We know of every shameful thing he has ever done, every freshly flowered girl he's sowed, every bastard he's sired. One of them serves on my ship."

He felt Helsif's eyes boring into him like spears of ice. He resisted the urge to shudder. He had sailed beyond the Thousand Isles, through storms that had dashed great ships to soggy kindling; he had walked beneath the Shadow beyond Asshai, fought brindled men and corsairs and wyverns and krakens in Sothoryos, and still, Helsif's red eyes made his flesh crawl. He couldn't imagine how foul the Bloodflower's presence must be. _Strange,_ he thought, _that so beautiful a woman can be so vile._

"Garlund, sit, please." After the thief sat, Thorfnn continued. "There are two things that Hilda wished for us to discuss while she journeys to Shor's Hall, and two things only; how to quietly mobilize our levies and longships, and finding her a husband. I will hear no more of Wulfric."

He sat and the meeting carried on. The arguments continued, but the king and Wulfric weren't mentioned again, not even in passing. Arlan insulted a son of Darkbrother and the meeting dissolved into back and forth bickering; perhaps it had never been anything but.

Arlan wanted Hilda to wed his son, Aidan, who Thorfinn already knew had his heart set on a Wull girl. Tsilda's son, Feifnir, was four years younger than Hilda, but he was offered up all the same, along with her nephew, Harkon. Lorheim had no suggestions; the wolves of Jorrvaskr were barred from Shor's Hall, and no one wanted to discover what would happen if a future Dovahkiin should be claimed by Hircine instead of Shor.

Sofie and Robar put forth every unwed male from the Darkbrother clan, including Rorlund, the Bolton bastard. Garlund Nightgale advocated for his son, as did Thranson Silveren. Gildheim Blackbriar sat as quietly as Thorfinn, for all his sons were wed, and his grandsons were betrothed. And Balmir… Balmir simply stared. He was rather dull-witted, unless the matter be steel. With a hammer and anvil, he was a genius.

Thrankull, Thranson's boy, would be a good match, Thorfinn had to admit. He wasn't particularly comely, but he wasn't homely either. His looks didn't really matter; Hilda was beautiful enough for the both of them, and she had never been the sort to swoon over a fair face. He had a good head on his shoulders, was frightening with a bow in his hands, and he was devoted to his people. Of course, something similar could be said for Feifnir, Harkon, and most of the Darkbrother boys - not that folks would stand for Hilda marrying into _that_ clan. Harkon and Feifnir had the benefit of being handsome, but they were Knights of the Dawn, or in line to be, and their first loyalty was to Meridia.

The Hrothgar looked to Helsif for a suggestion, sensing, perhaps, that she had something to share. Thorfinn pondered the revulsion he felt for her. It wasn't a new feeling, but it had never seemed so strong before. He'd been half smitten with her as a child, he remembered; as he aged, his infatuation had matured into wariness, and now, to disgust. If she were not so useful, he would end her himself.

"Are we all so smitten with Hilda that we must keep her for ourselves?" Helsif began. "Her father wed a Nord, yes, but her grandfather married a Ryswell, and his father married a Stark. In fact, not since Ragnar Redblood has any firstborn of the Dovah line married a Nord. Even Helga the Heavenly, who killed her first betrothed, wed an Umber. We will need the North in the times to come. We will need the Starks. Hilda should wed one of them."

"She cannot wed Robb," the Hrothgar said, still twirling his whiskers. "He is to be the Stark in Winterfell, and Hilda's firstborn must be Lord of Sovngarde, to insure the continuance of the line. The boy, Bran, is too young, though Hilda is fond of him. If he were but a few years older..."

Sofie Darkbrother said, "There are other Starks."

"Aye," agreed Gildheim Blackbriar. "There's a fair few of them down at Moat Cailin.."

"They are all wed," said Thrain Silveren. "Old Lord Brandon has betrothals inked and dried before his grandsons have taken their first breath. But there is Alys' bastard boy, if you must have a swamp wolf. The Starks recognize him as kin."

Helsif laughed, and the sound made Thorfinn's hair stand on in. It echoed unnaturally, bouncing from one wall to the other, then to the ceiling, until the sound seemed to come from everywhere and everything. Thorfinn noticed Tsilda's clenched fists.

"The Starks of Moat Cailin are great friends, and honorable," Helsif said, "but they hold no dominion over the north."

"There are no other Starks left to consider," Arlan pointed out, still upset that his suggestions had been rebuffed by nearly the entire council.

"There is one," Thorfinn said. "The Bastard of Winterfell. Jon Snow."

The silence turned contemplative. Nords cared little for the Faith's disparagement of bastards, but no Dovahkiin had ever wed one before.

"He is beloved by Lord Stark," the Hrothgar said.

"And by his brother as well," added Sofie Darkbrother. "By all his siblings, save for Lady Sansa."

"Lady Stark hates him, though," Robar Darkbrother argued. "She considers him a threat to her children's inheritance, and a stain against her honor. What will she think when he becomes the husband of the Dovahkiin? House Stark has never had a vassal as strong as House Ysmir, no lord has; she will worry that he will seek to usurp the lordship from her son, and her hatred of him will become hatred of us."

"Perhaps," Helsif allowed. "Perhaps not." She shrugged. "It was only a suggestion. Ultimately, Lady Hilda will decide. It would be nice, however, to reach a consensus, or something resembling one."

"Lady Stark is a fool, like all southron women," Tsilda said. "So what if she fears the bastard? She will never be Lord of Winterfell."

"The boy has honor," Arlan grumbled begrudgingly. "And he isn't half-bad with a sword, for a milk-drinker. What? I've seen him fight against the boys in Wintertown, on several occasions. Aidan speaks highly of him."

"He's a mopey little shit," Lorheim Jorrvaskr said. Garlund thought that was hilarious, and laughed himself into a coughing fit. Thorfinn had almost forgotten the wolf was there. How could so large and hulking a man sit so silently? Thorfinn was a big man himself, but Lorheim, as was the norm amongst the Jorrvaskr men, was over seven feet tall, with thick red-hair and intricate runes winding about his arms and disappearing beneath his sleeveless gambeson. Thorfinn knew that if the wolf should ever strip naked, the runes would continue down his chest and stomach, all the way to his feet.

Thorfinn found it peculiar that the Jorrvaskr wolves in their human forms were so large, and yet, beneath the light of the full moon, the bears were almost thrice their size. Not that the bears, in human form, were in any way small. Arlan was approaching seven feet himself, and his son Aidan was taller. But a number of the bears were shorter even than Thorfinn, which was still taller than a great deal of southron knights. Below the Neck, Nords were thought of as freakish for collectively being so tall, men and women both. Thorfinn rather felt that their disparagement was born of fear more than anything else. The few times a Stark lord had called the Nords to war, they had left a lasting impression.

"Jon Snow is a bastard in a world that hates his kind," Garlund said. "A little moping is understandable. He would not be so reviled if he were to join us. Aidan is a good judge of character. I am certainly not opposed to the idea."

"Nor I," said Tsilda.

"Nor I," said Sofie and Robar together.

Save Lorheim, they were all in agreement. They would put forth Jon Snow's name as a viable husband, along with, it was decided, the Nord boys, as well as a few second sons from southron houses who might be of some use, should the realm fall to war. Loras Tyrell was one, though Sofie and Garlund both joked that he was a pillow-biting milk-drinker who would sooner lay with Wulfric than Hilda. Quentyn Martell was another, but Gildheim Blackbriar, who had spent almost a decade in Dorne after King Robert's war, didn't think that the Dornish prince would have anything to do with a northern banner. Thorfinn agreed. He had walked the sands of Dorne a few times in his life; the north had might as well been in another continent, to them. None dared put forth Tyrion Lannister, and no other great house had a second son or third son to spare.

There was much less discussion about how to best gather the levies. There was to be a festival in Sovngarde in eight months; the best time to gather the men would be then. It would take nearly half that time to discreetly carry the messages all across the north and south, so slow was the only way to go, unless they wanted to risk using ravens or pigeons and have a message intercepted.

Thorfinn, as High Admiral and Lord Vigilant, would see personally to the longships himself. It made sense, he figured, as he would have to see to the fleet anyway, for Hilda had given him other tasks as well. _From where did your devious mind arise, sweet Hilda?_

The Hrothgar adjourned the meeting with the customary farewell. "Wind guide you." The representatives trickled out in pairs, and the Hrothgar climbed the spiral steps to the second level of the chamber and disappeared in the bookcases. Only Helsif and Thorfinn remained. _Ah,_ he thought, eyeing her. _Of course. You learned to be devious at the feet of a devil._

Helsif caught his gaze and smiled crookedly, as if she had heard his thoughts. The tip of a fang peaked over the edge of her ruby lips.

"Do I still unnerve you so, little cousin? The great Thane they call Deathbrand? Surely not so terrible a killer is afraid of little old me?"

Thorfinn didn't grace her with an answer. "You should be careful of Tsilda," he said instead. "Meridia hates your kind. She will kill you if she gets the chance."

Helsif laughed in such a way as to convey how absurd she thought the idea of Tsilda killing her was. "She will try. I will stop her. That is, if she can even work up the nerve to go against Hilda, which I doubt. Jarl Asmund is my kin, same as you, and the Lady Dawnstar is Hilda's own aunt; Tsilda will have to go against her Jarl, her sister, and her queen as well. Two queens, in fact; Hilda wears the crown, but Lady Helena is still her mother, still beloved by all Nords for giving birth to the Dovahkiin." Helsif leaned forward and braced pale, slender fingers against the table, looking like nothing so much as Dibella come alive. "Tsilda is much too dutiful and honorable to move against me."

She stood smoothly, as if a snake rearing up to strike. Thorfinn fought the urge to grab his dagger.

"You, on the other hand… you are playing a dangerous game, cousin. Hilda has enough to worry about. I don't think she will appreciate-"

"Hilda doesn't know," he said, angry all of a sudden. "And you won't tell her." He surged to his feet, gave Helsif a long, hard look, and stepped away from the table. "Like you said, she has enough to worry about. She named me her Thane for a reason; I have never shamed her before, and I don't intend to start now." _You've already shamed her_ , the treacherous voice piped up.

"Very well, cousin. I will keep my silence. For now." Helsif sauntered to the nearest window, and didn't even wince at the light that spilled through. The sky was a mix of orange and red, and a spear of light fell across the ocean, lengthening as the sun sank beneath the waters. "You killed one kraken. Let us hope you need not kill another."

Thorfinn turned on his heel and left the room with nary a word. Helsif's laughter followed him. He passed the two Naathi girls waiting in the hall. They smiled tentatively when he passed, but hurriedly looked away from his face when they took note of his thunderous expression.

He remembered when he'd claimed them. Hardly a year had passed, but it seemed like much longer. The seas had been rough, and more than one man had been tossed overboard by mountainous swells. The slave ship, heavy with human cargo, sails torn to tatters by windswept debris, had been ripe for the taking. Stuhn had truly shined upon him that day. Kyne too, for as soon as his men boarded the ship, the sea had calmed and the storm had dissipated.

A lesser man might have been angry with Helsif, for nosing into his affairs, for daring to threaten him, but all his anger was turned inward. What had he been thinking, to do what he did? Balon hated Thorfinn, as he had hated Thorfinn's father. Askeladd's refusal to join the Fleet of Stuhn with the Iron Fleet during the Greyjoy Rebellion had birthed the hatred. Askeladd leading the invasion of the islands had cemented it.

And now…

 _I am mad,_ he thought. _Utterly mad. Nothing else can explain it._

"Dibella's sweet tits, Thorfinn, why the frown? Your bowels stopped up?" Gunther was standing guard at a towering pair of ironwood doors that were etched with serpent-like dragons skewered on spears and swords. Runes ran up the edge of the door, curving along the arch at the top.

Thorfinn hadn't meant to walk to Hilda's quarters, but that was where his feet had taken him. "It is nothing," he said. "Is she still-?"

Gunther nodded. "Still in Sovngarde. She returned for a moment to share something with Lady Brendalyn – I could hear the old crone crying through the doors. Ysgramor himself wanted to speak with her, she said."

A black, heavy feeling settled in Thorfinn's gut. "Ysgramor? Truly?"

"Yes," Gunther said. "Truly."

"It is a great honor," Thorfinn heard himself say. "Ysgramor is one of the greatest heroes to have ever lived. It is from his line that the first Dovahkiin was born." What great trials lay in her future, he thought, that she would need the counsel of Ysgramor? He had lived in Shor's Hall for an eternity; his wisdom was said to be on par with the gods themselves.

They spoke for a while about Thorfinn's numerous campaigns and journey's to the east, and Gunther shared tales from when he had run afoul of two warrior women in Pentos. "You know the ones I mean, with the iron ring through their nipples," he explained. "Some of them are ugly as the ass end of a stot, but a fair few are pretty enough, almost as pretty as a Nord girl. I had never heard of Bayasabhad until then, so I just thought they were dusky-skinned whores. They took offense to me whipping out my snowberries for them to fondle, and tried to crush them instead."

"Telling the story again, brother?" Gunnar approached from behind them. His chainmail, as subtle and tight a weave as any Thorfinn had ever seen, hardly made a sound as he moved. Gunnar was pushing seven feet, same as his twin, and looked as if he had been sculpted from living marble, further hardened from raiding with Thorfinn. How the tiny Lady Alys got on with the both of them, Thorfinn would never know. "Come on," Gunnar urged. "I had Vanora send for guards to stand watch. Let's get drunk."

"I cannot," Thorfinn said. "Hilda has given me a task, and I would see it done."

"Well alright," Gunnar grumbled, as if aggrieved. "If _Hilda_ gave you a task, I can in no way impede you. Even if I wanted to."

"Aye," Gunther agreed. "Begone, Shield-Thane! We'll drink enough for two of you, have no doubt."

Thorfinn made his way through the wide, labyrinthine corridors to a long set of stairs that disappeared beneath the earth. He passed a number of servants along the way, some Nords, some Naathi, and a few hairless, green-skinned fish girls. They had been raised here, in Sovngarde, taken from their bleak isles as babes.

He had been sailing the seas east of Ibben, following the journey his father had made, when a storm blew him to the isles. He had still been young and foolish enough to disembark and explore them. The natives had not taken his presence well, but as they had neither armor nor good steel, killing them had been so easy that he shied away from it, feeling as if he were killing children. After the isle was scoured clean, he had discovered a warren of tunnels beneath the rock, and a room filled with queer, crying babes. His captains had urged him to leave the babes to die, but Thorfinn lived by the creed of Tsuhn, and took them as his spoils, as was his right by the god's decree.

Raised away from their barren scatter of stones, they were no different from any other child, save for their skin and lack of hair. And their shyness. Hilda loved them, he knew. Somehow, the girl had gotten it in her head that they were _beautiful_ , and had told him that if they gave their hearts to Shor, he would see them interred in his Hall, just as if they were true Nords.

The stairs curved in on themselves, back and forth and back and forth, not quite a spiral, but close. The way was dimly lit. At the bottom of the stairs, he came upon four guards standing watch beneath orange torchlight. The furthest reaches of the cavernous chamber lay shrouded in darkness.

The chamber opened up to the coast. Beyond its entrance was a cove of scattered rocks, dark sand, and moss covered stone. The sun was nearly gone now, half swallowed by the sea, and the sky was streaked yellow and orange and purple. The water, tinged gold by the setting sun, lapped gently at the beach, and gulls called overhead, swooping down to pluck scuttling crabs from the beach. The wind gusted up off the water, trailing a thousand needle-thin fingers through his hair.

Thorfinn had fallen asleep and woken up to such sounds since he was babe; as he basked in the song of the sea, a sort of peace settled over him, and he smiled.

Instead of docking at the stone quays, he had docked here, where his galleas had been floating ever since Hilda had had it built. The shipwright who oversaw its construction lived in a large hut further down the beach, amidst a family of seals. They were kin, Thorfinn and the shipwright, but distantly so. Rumor was that the man could trade skins with the seals, and it was for them that he knew the water so well, that his ships were unmatched across the world. Only the Fleet of Stuhn floated better ships, for they were all crafted from the magical wood of the ships that had ferried the Nords to Westeros.

Thorfinn's longship was beached and covered in a blanket of leather and leaves, along with a few other smaller ships, fishing skiffs and long, lean rowers. The mighty galleas was anchored further out in the water, swaying gently with the swell. Even from here he could hear a few crew members on the deck, shouting and laughing. The double-decked galleas dipped over a hundred oars, with three tall masts and vast, square sails bearing the black dragon of Ysmir. He had yet to take the ship out on the sea, preferring his smaller warship for the speed it afforded him, and the history and superiority of the magical wood.

Now though, he would sail the galleas south through Blazewater Bay, up Salt Spear to the Fever, out into the Bite, and onward to the Narrow Sea, escorted by three double-decked warships and a slew of longships and galleys. It was all part of Hilda's plan; if Thorunn couldn't cross the Narrow Sea, then he couldn't bring war to the Seven Kingdoms, and Wulfric wouldn't die for a madman's ambition.

 _But who am I to call Thorunn mad,_ he thought, _if I myself am afflicted with the same madness? Desire turns men to fools._

He took one of the small skiffs out to the galleas and climbed aboard, nodding to the crew assembled on deck. They were playing for forfeits with a pair of six-sided dice. Harald and Morgen were almost completely naked, and it looked as if Hella and Agnis would soon be joining them. Given to arduous, physical pursuits, none of the women had so much as an ounce of fat on them, unless you counted Morgen's heavy breasts and Agnis' round arse. Harald, though, had a belly as big around as a barrel of mead, and appropriately so, given that he was called Harald Barrel-belly. Hella, the youngest of them, was almost rawboned, with latticework scars on her back, Nordic runes etched into the skin between the crossing lines.

Fenrik seemed to be having the best luck, having only lost his boots and a glove. Thorfinn wondered how soon it would be before they started pairing off to give praise to Dibella. Morgen was fond of Harald's belly; whenever the seas grew too rough, she would rub it for luck.

Chuckling to himself, he made his way below deck to his quarters. When he entered the room, his laughter died, for there was the source of his worry, laying across his bed. The peace the sea had brought him was lost in the space of a breath, strangled and cast aside to die.

He must have been mad. Why else would he have stolen Asha Greyjoy from beneath her lord father's nose? _But she is mad as well_ , _or she would not have come with me._

"This is a ship fit for a king," she said as he entered, climbing to her feet. There was a dangerous glint in her sharp eyes.

He felt a stirring in his loins. His desire for her knew no bounds. "I am no king. Just a Thane."

"So you've said." She ambled over to the scroll-covered desk and palmed the curved dagger resting atop the mahogany wood. She had let her hair grow out some; it fell just to the nape of her neck, dark and wild. "How does it fair in the open sea?"

"I wouldn't know. I've yet to sail it. Galleons are best for open waters, but this isn't quite a galleon. Longships are best for raiding –"

"And stealing," she put in wryly.

"And stealing," he allowed, "but this isn't quite a longship either."

"How many ships like this does your navy float? Five? Ten? Twenty?" She crept closer, purposely, deliberately, like a panther preparing to pounce. She was a good height for a Westerosi woman, just a few inches under six feet, and yet Thorfinn towered over her as if she were a child.

"We don't float many ships quite like this. But of a similar size? More than twenty."

"So it's true, then. My father always said if the Nords had stood with him, he'd have won his rebellion. I would be a princess. A queen, eventually. My cunt would be all the more more coveted, and much too worthy for the likes of you."

She swung at his face. She always fought him, and she always lost, not that she ever fought hard. He caught her arm, twisted it behind her, and crushed his lips to hers. The dagger clattered against the floor.

Together, they stumbled back to the wall. She rubbed her thigh against his manhood and worked him to hardness, then punched him in the ribs, laughing. He groaned, grabbed that arm too, and pinned her flush to the wall.

She stomped his foot and bit his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, but when he let go of her arm, she reached up and wound her fingers into his hair and pulled him closer. She pressed her tongue into his mouth, forceful, demanding, and moaned when his fingers found her center. The pressure of her thigh went away, replaced with a hand. She stroked his length, fingers working deftly at the laces.

He pushed her away, staggered back, and took a ragged breath. "Damn you, wench. You will be my doom, mark my words."

Asha laughed again as she slipped off her tunic – _his_ tunic – revealing beautiful round breasts with pert, dark nipples, and a smooth, flat stomach. A thin line of coarse, dusky curls disappeared beneath her breeches. She kicked off her boots, then tugged off her breeches. Her legs were long and sculpted, and there was a thin, silvery scar that curved from her hip to the back of her thigh.

He kneeled, beckoned her closer, and kissed it from tip to tip. _She found the sweetwater,_ he thought, tasting her. He slipped a finger inside of her, and she cried out. She was _dripping_ wet.

"You should take me back," she said, spreading her legs and bending over to accommodate him. "If we, _mmmm,_ if we both…" she trailed off with a long, soft sigh, pushing back against his mouth. "My father listens to me," she managed, kneading her breasts with one hand, the other fisted in his hair. "We must go to, _ooooh,_ we must," she paused, sucked in a sharp breath, loosed a long, low moan, "we must – _oh god_ – we must return." She gasped, shuddering, knees buckling, and tossed her head back to loose a keening howl.

He leaned back and gave her arse a hard smack. His beard was soaked, and he was hard as granite. The smell of her, the taste of her, was almost overpowering. It set his blood aflame and muddled his thoughts. All he could think about was fucking her. "Your father hates me. He will never agree to a marriage between us."

She turned around and captured his lips. Her kisses turned hungry - she unlaced his doublet, yanked off his breeches, traced her fingers over his body. He was lean and long-limbed, tight with corded muscle. He hadn't a single scar, save for the thin white slice hidden beneath his beard.

"You are a fool," Asha said between kisses. "He might have parleyed had we approached him together. Now?" She tweaked his nipples, sucked at his neck, nibbled her way across his chest. "He will kill you. And good riddance. I have no use for fools, no matter how big their cock." She reached down and stroked it.

He managed a laugh at that, even as his hips jerked. "I will not begrudge him the attempt. But if am a fool, then so are you."

Thorfinn did not fear Balon. The Fleet of Stuhn was unrivaled in all of the known world, be it in a coastal battle or one in the open seas, and like his father before him, he was its admiral, and lord of the Order. The Ironborn had lived on their half-barren islands for thousands of years, raiding all the while; they were masters of the waters, living and dying on their longships. And yet it had been the Nords who crossed the Sunset Sea, they who had sailed across worlds and realms in search of a new home. _If the Ironborn are masters of the sea, then we Nords are gods._

Still, there was nothing to be gained by stealing Asha, and everything to be lost. Lord Balon's enmity would extend itself to all Nord peoples. The Lord Reaper still blamed them for his failed rebellion, as Asha had pointed out, for as Lord Stannis had smashed the Iron fleet off the coast of Fair Isle, Askelaad had sailed south and invaded the islands. Balon and Askelaad had been as good of friends as men like them could be. It was no small wonder that Balon had taken the betrayal personally.

No, Thorfinn did not fear Balon, nor any mortal man, but he had no desire to put more pressure on Hilda, to shame her, not when she had Thorunn and the king to worry over. _And winter is coming._ The winds coming off the sea were colder than they'd been in years, and the Frozen Shore across the Bay of Ice was slowly taking more and more of the sea for itself.

They fell into the bed. Asha had not learned the erotic arts in a temple of Dibella like most Nordic girls, but she knew him as she knew herself; it was simple for her to bring him pleasure, to make him call out her name; likewise, it seemed as if he could make her climax with naught but a touch. When he slipped inside of her, she cried out so loudly his ears rung, and wrapped her legs around his waist.

He was not gentle.

" _Yes, yes, yes, yesssss,"_ she moaned breathlessly as he pounded her. Teeth clench, Thorfinn could do little more than grunt. She was so tight, so wet; as wet as the sea, as tight as a vise. _Sovngarde cannot compare. This… this is heaven._

Her fingers dug into his back, nails biting deep. He reared back, then slammed into her. And again. And again. She cried out, louder than before, giving in to her release. Her screams echoed in the cabin, and she clenched around him, gushing. He thrust harder, deeper, and harder still. She sobbed, she cried, she screamed, eyes clenched, breath ragged. Her back arched, her eyes fluttered.

 _"Yeeeeesssss,"_ she moaned again, breath hitching as he buried himself in her.

He had been her first, and when they had gone raiding in the Basilisk Isles, she had sought him out every night. Sometimes they fucked atop the deck, beneath sun or stars. Once he had mounted her with some pirate's blood still dripping from his hands. That had been nearly seven years ago. She'd had another man or two in that time, and he had fathered at least three bastards, but it was to him that she returned, and it was to him that she wished to be wed.

If only Balon didn't hate him so. _And now, he will only hate me more. War took his sons. Madness took his wife. My father took his honor. Now, I have taken his daughter._

After they had both been sated several times over, Thorfinn called for mead. His man, Zeffir, brought a tankard and a platter of grilled shark, cod, sea weed, smoked crab meat, and fried whale fat with a bowl of melted butter.

"We should return to Pyke," Asha said around a mouthful of smoked crab. Her skin glistened with sweat, and there were bruises forming at her hips and wrists where he had gripped her too tightly.

"Aye," Thorfinn agreed, fingers tracing the contours of her body. He was already stirring anew. "We should."

She watched him with such quiet intensity that he wondered if he might have offended her in some way. "But we won't return," she said.

He said nothing for a while, staring up at the ceiling as he brushed his nails up down her arm. What would his father think of this, he wondered? _What will Hilda think of it?_ Finally, he whispered, "Is that your wish? To return to your father?"

She shifted in the bed until her back was against the wall. He was struck, suddenly, by how much he had come to love her. She was fierce, fearless, and fucked better than any daughter of Dibella or Lyseni whore. _I should take her back,_ he thought. _It would be for the best._ "Is that your wish?" he asked again, louder. "Should we set sail for Pyke?"

A heavy silence settled over them. Together, they teetered on a cliff as thin as a sword edge, above a roiling black sea. If they went backward, they might make it safely down the treacherous mountain, or they might be dashed against rocks. If they went forward, they might survive the swim to the distant shore, or they might drown. But Asha didn't fear drowning, and neither did he, for they both had been weaned on the sea.

"…No," she said. "I will stay."

 _Forgive me, Hilda._


	3. Vanora

**_Vanora_**

A scruffy brown-haired boy with a dagger riding his hip sprinted down the stony lane yelling, "Cod! Fresh cod! Two pennies a pound, two pennies a pound, fresh cod for sale, two pennies a pound!"

Vanora tensed when he bumped into her as he ran past, fingering the knives hidden up her quilled sleeves. It was a struggle to keep them sheathed. She saw in her mind's eyes the reckless boy's blood painting the cobbles crimson. She imagined hounds tearing at his flesh, growling madly as they fought for scraps of gristle.

The images exhilarated her. The images disgusted her. _Sweet Ramsay, what have you done to me?_

Fisherman's Alley bustled beneath the noonday haze. Despite its name, the Alley was more than a mere alley; it was several of them, in fact, two long lanes that spanned the entire western wall of the city, crisscrossed by a dozen streets, with stalls and storefronts in neat little rows. The entire district was devoted to the sea, and every stall, store, and warehouse took their wares from it.

From the peak of the Street of Mead Vanora could see clear down the center the Alley and over the wall to the ocean beyond. By her count, a thousand and more fishing sloops were sailing the frigid waters outside Harbortown, to say nothing of the galleys and carracks.

The air was thick with the shouting of fishermen, ringing bells, singing gulls, the rumbling wash of waves against the shore, the steady murmur of thousands of voices. Everything smelled like fish. The air stank of it; when she breathed through her mouth, she could taste it in the back of her throat.

She was starting to hate fish. Hate the taste, hate the smell. Every once in a while, she wanted to eat suckling pig, or a nice cut of veal – even a rabbit would do. Something that walked on four legs and didn't swim through the fucking ocean. Something bloody. She didn't even like being in the district for the fishy smell, but she and Maeve had just come from visiting the Hagraven's mother. The old witch had made her home in the hill tower that crested the Street of Mead, and grew a wealth of herbs in her glass gardens.

From Hag's Tower, as it was called, Fisherman's Alley was the quickest way to the Dread Father's shrine out on the harbor, and the underground warren of the Black Hand, which was in turn the fastest route back to the castle. There were hidden entrances to the tunnels hidden all around the city: In the temples that surrounded Seventree Hill, in a choice few slope-roofed homes, in the castle cellars, down on the rocky beaches; even in the castle Sovngarde.

As Vanora shouldered her way through the press of bodies, wrestling with murderous urges, Maeve trailing in her wake, a fishmonger called out.

"Hey there pretty lassies! I've got good whale meat here, horned, blue, grey, and some already smoked. Come have a taste, free…of…"

Vanora had turned towards him halfway through his pitch. A black hand stood proudly over her heart, embroidered on her white satin gown, palm up, fingers spread. The black leather choker about her neck was adorned with a tiny white skull.

"I… you…" His eyes flickered up to her face. At the sight of her near colorless eyes, he became, if anything, more wary. She might have laughed at his caution, if she had been the sort of person given to mirth. "Forgive me, Lady Vanora. I meant no offense." There was a false note to his tone; he hated her, she knew, but his fear was much greater.

She could almost hear his frantic thoughts. _Don't summon the Bloodflower upon me. Great Shor, father of all Nords, shield me from Sithis and his vile children._

 _Shor is a child of Sithis as well,_ she wanted to tell him, knowing his mind. _We were all born of the Dread Father. And it is to him that we will all return._

Maeve, sharp nosed, soft-tongued, and slim as a willow, with eyes the color of burnished brass, said, "Fret not, noble fisherman. I do not believe that my friend took offense. Why, you only offered us a bit of fish! Tell him, Vanora." She snatched up one of the offered slivers of smoked fish, tossed it in her mouth, and moaned in delight at the taste.

The fisherman didn't look any more at ease by her declaration. Maeve's eyes were evidence of her Glenmoril blood. Of her magic.

Vanora curled her lips into a crooked smile, and the fishmonger paled further. "No offense was taken, good man." Her voice was soft as sighing wind, less than a whisper, but somehow loud enough to be heard over the Alley din. "Blessings be upon you."

"Blessings," he echoed hollowly.

Maeve thanked him, grabbed Vanora's hand, and pulled her deeper into the alley. Maeve, like Vanora, was one of Hilda's many handmaidens, and the daughter of a powerful woman amongst their people. Born of the Hagraven and a son of House Darkbrother, Maeve was both Vanora's distant cousin and a fellow heiress, though not half as reviled. Nords, as a whole, where mistrustful of magic, but none could doubt the benefits of its use. Maeve was only a middling user of magic – most witches were, besides the Hagraven – but she was a highly skilled alchemist, with an expertise that belied her youth, and her potions could cure most any ailment, mend cuts, and heal bruises.

Her poisons were likewise coveted.

All the commonfolk feared Vanora's kind, though, for the Darkbrothers were the chosen of Sithis, sons and daughters of the abyss. The commoners might have banded together to burn them out if not for the patronage of House Ysmir. Since Vaskr the Valiant himself, who was the first to step upon the western shore those many years ago, and who had lain the first stone of their great city, a Darkbrother had remained close to the Dovahkiin, with sons and daughters growing up as brothers and sisters, as treasured companions and trusted servants and valiant defenders.

Vanora and Hilda shared such a relationship. As babes, they had drunk milk from the same tit, slept in the same crib, and after being weaned, ate from the same plate. As girls, they had shared everything: clothes, knives, beds. They had sat the same lessons, until Hilda's thu'um began to manifest, and Vanora discovered that she, like her mother before her, could enter the Void where the Dread Lord dwelled. But that had only brought them closer, for they had come to share a burden that few others could comprehend. Vanora loved Hilda as much as a person could possibly love another, more than her own kin; more than herself, even.

But lately, that love had begun to sour. Resentment had reared its filthy head, and every day, her resentment grew, and shame too, that she would think ill of her most beloved companion. The thoughts came as buffeting winds in an autumn storm, incessant and unceasing. Her mother used to tell her that love and hate were one in the same; just lights skewed through different prisms. Her feelings had begun to reflect that belief.

No one feared Hilda like they feared her, for all that Hilda could break them with mere words. From her golden hair to her ravishing smile, she was everything Vanora wasn't. Her queen was breathtakingly beautiful, almost ethereal, with soulful, slate-blue eyes that were flecked with silver and sparkled like stars, sun-gold hair as soft as down, and a voice sweeter than heaven's nectar. People wept joyously to see her smile, and wept ever the more to hear her sing.

Vanora was short, closer to plain than comely, and lithe, but flat-chested, with hair that was dark and coarse, like black-iron wire, and a cruel mouth given to twisted smirks. Her eyes were pale as mist; she had dead eyes, some said, the color of ghosts drifting about a lichyard, as empty as the graves of the wandering undead.

But tt wasn't for her looks that Vanora resented Hilda. Hilda had always been beautiful, and Vanora had always been aware of it. It was good that Hilda was so beautiful, she thought; th people loved her all the more for it, and foreign folk were utterly smitten by her. When she and Hilda were together, people tended to forget about her, to overlook her, and that suited her perfectly, for she was meant for the shadows just as Hilda was meant for the light.

People thought Hilda gentle, and only that, as if her beauty somehow put her above darker emotions and motivations. The notion was laughable, in Vanora's mind. Hilda was very loving, true, and she _could_ be gentle, but there was ruthlessness in her, hidden cruelty, for how else could she command such men and women as Nords? The blood of Ysmir did not suffer soft hearts. Vanora likened her to a blue steel sword sheathed in glittering gold and sparkling jewels; utterly gorgeous to behold, but hiding a sharp edge that could carve through bone like whale butter. Vanora, being what she was, couldn't help but love her, and yet…

In the weeks since the king's decree, time and time again, Hilda had asked Vanora to venture into the Void to communicate with her mother and the Bloodflower, knowing how it affected her, how it deadened her. Delving into the Void was not a task to be taken lightly; the writhing darkness stole slivers of her soul every time she ventured into its depths, piece by piece, slice by slice, bite by bite, like a wolf gnawing at its dying prey. That was how her mother had become the vile woman that she was, she thought; the Void had stolen all from her that was good and true, leaving only darkness. It would happen to Vanora too, it was inevitable, but she wished it weren't her best friend, her sister, her _queen_ , forcing her to it.

 _Perhaps it is best that it is Hilda,_ she would tell herself. She couldn't fathom damning her soul for anyone else, not Old Vjorn, and certainly not her black hearted mother. But her reasoning did nothing to assuage her feelings, did nothing to silence her thoughts, so she ignored them, buried them beneath her shame, her guilt, and there they festered, like an infected wound.

And then, there was the matter with her half-brother. _Sweet Ramsay._ That, more than anything, weighed on her mind, for it meant that perhaps the Void had already stolen more than she realized. She shouldn't have ridden with Rorlund to the Dreadfort. She should've kept her distance from Ramsay. Hilda would hate her, for what she was becoming. It was Hilda's fault she was becoming what she was.

 _Blood flowed through her fingers, thick and red, and dripped to the floor to pool at her feet. His gurgling screams reverberated in her ears, echoing off centuries old stone._

Sovngarde seemed to reflect her dark thoughts. Gray clouds had rolled in from the north, blanketing the sun. The city sprawl was wrought of smooth dark granite, from the cobbled streets to the tallest towers. In the daylight, the sun would catch on the quartz in the stone and make the city glimmer like one great, black jewel, but at night, the stone seemed as if to absorb the pale glow of the moon, greedy for its light. Black stone walls, black stone buildings, black stone streets. When the sun fell beyond the sea, shadows ruled in Sovngarde.

Vanora and Maeve followed Fisherman's Alley down to the gatehouse, past wooden stalls where merchants peddled clams and lobsters and crabs, seal skins and whale leather, shark-toothed combs and necklaces, pearls, and narwhal horn spears. The city guard, familiar with their faces, hardly paid them any attention as they passed through gatehouse and crossed the trestle bridge to Harbortown.

Harbortown was the only district of the city where the buildings were more timber than stone; open to the sea, it was the most vulnerable as well. A soggy tract of soft-soiled bog lay between the western wall and Harbortown that was swarmed with shrubs and stippled with stunted alders. There were blueberries, cranberries, white and pink and yellow orchids, and strange little green shrubs that were covered in pink-hued bristles. Beneath the stench of fish and the salty smell of the sea, Vanora scented spicy vanilla, sweet lemon, and something delicate and airy, like winter roses. Maeve picked handfuls of the orchids that grew beneath the bridge, and stuffed the fragrant petals into the leather pouch hanging at her side.

"For a potion?" Vanora asked, seeking reprieve from her miasmic ponderings.

Maeve shook her head. "No. For rushes and perfumes. Hilda asked me to make a batch for when we go to Winterfell."

Vanora almost scowled before she stopped herself. There it was, swimming in her chest, a toxic mass of resentment and shame; And beneath it, far more familiar, was a yearning ache that had been with her as long as she could remember.

She needed to talk to someone, but she hadn't a clue who. Maeve wouldn't understand. Hilda would – _no she won't –_ she always did, but Vanora couldn't bear the thought of revealing her anger, her bitterness, her shame. She certainly couldn't tell her mother, nor Rorlund, for that matter; he was a Nord down to the pits of his soul, and the both of them hundreds of leagues away besides. He had never known any feelings for the Dovahkiin but love and respect.

Helsif, maybe? Or Yanora? Of Aenora's four daughters, Yanora was the most sane, the most stable, but also decrepitly old, with a failing memory. Elnora was a mad as their mother, and jealous of Vanora's power, and Lenora was every bit as cruel as her father. She even had his smiling eyes, as Vanora had her father's eyes. _We're all damned,_ she thought. _All of the Night Mother's children, damned by birth._

"Is there something ailing you?" said Maeve. The wind coming up off the sea swept her reddish-blond locks across her face. "You seem really pensive lately, ever since you came back from the Dreadfort, but it's gotten worse in the past few weeks. You never really talk to us anymore. … Did something happen with Rorlund? Are you afraid for Wulfric?"

Vanora gave her a scathing look, but Maeve was utterly unbothered, having long since grown immune to them. "I am afraid of nothing."

"I only ask because… I have never known you to keep your thoughts so guarded. You know the saying just as well as I: _Share your ails and see your heart unburdened._ You _can_ talk to me, you know. I can keep a secret as well as Hilda, if for some reason you don't want to talk to her…"

Vanora shook her head, ignoring the tiny, frail voice that urged her to share her feelings lest they continue to rot, casting it off into the vast blackness of the Void. "It's nothing."

Maeve didn't seem convinced, but she kept her silence and didn't press.

The buildings here had sloped roofs of timber and slate, all crowned with dragon heads, like the bow of a longship. The shrine to Sithis had been carved into the sloping rock that evened out into the quay, wedged between a weathered tavern and a timber warehouse and closed in by a latticed iron gate. The damp, moldy chamber was thick with moss and deathly quiet.

The effigy of Sithis, a white skull carved from whale bone, its forehead adorned with an obsidian hand, sat atop a short, stout column in the center of the chamber, staring out with empty eyes. Nightshade littered the ground, like rushes strewn across a castle hall.

Vanora stepped up to the skull and kissed its lipless mouth. There was a faint, grinding sound, and then the face of the column swung open, revealing a narrow set of stairs that spiraled down into muggy darkness. The smell of mold thickened.

Maeve called light to her hand and descended first. Vanora followed after her, and the column swung shut with a groaning rattle.

Everything creaked and croaked. Maeve's meager light was little more than a candle flame. There was no wind flowing through the tunnel, but Vanora could still hear it whispering, a gentle murmur that came from nowhere and everywhere all at once. The sound of the waves was louder here, and the stone glistened with slimy wetness. Not a single stretch of rock was dry.

"Ooh!" Maeve exclaimed excitedly, pointing. "Look! The mushrooms are growing nicely. Especially Namira's Rot. They'll be ready for picking soon."

Vanora, like most of her kind, knew a little about alchemy; enough to craft a poison or two, but nothing else. "Have you figured out how to filter out the hallucinogens?"

"… No. Not quite. Gunther asked for a potion after a particularly tough bout against his brother. His bruises healed, but he nearly killed one of the serving girls thinking she was a 'tentacled hell-beast from the shadow planes beyond Sovngarde'."

Vanora managed a laugh. It echoed oddly against the walls, came back to her ears twisted and distorted, a mocking laugh instead of one of mirth. She pressed her lips together, angry all of a sudden. Was this all that she would ever be? A poisoned blade, absent hope and happiness, left with only bitterness and rage?

They came across a few Initiates, fewer Priests, and even fewer Hands. Vanora's family, though large, could not see personally to any and every little problem that arose; for more mundane work, there were Initiates, who were baptized into Sithis' brotherhood, entrusted only with messages and other menial tasks. And then there were the Priests, a rank beyond Initiate, who lived the word of Sithis in their every waking moment, keeping to the dark out of respect for the Void. They were more wraiths than men, but able enough killers. Brothers were those Priests who had proven their devotion and skill, and been accepted into the blood.

They all nodded to Maeve with nary a word, but when their shadowed faces looked to Vanora, they took to their knees.

"Night Daughter," they all called as one, voices rising to coil through the echoing caverns and clog its tunnels. "Blessings," the priests murmured, bowing to kiss the ground. "For Sithis," said the Brothers, fists crossed over their hearts.

Vanora said nothing. The Void tickled at the edges of her vision. She heard screams. Sweet, sweet screams, and begging, and blood splattering. He had begged, hadn't he? _Begged like a bitch._ She saw a face with beady eyes and wormy lips, and blood, so much blood, flooding the floor, drenching the walls, rouging her lips. And barking. She couldn't forget the barking.

"Vanora?"

Her vision cleared. Maeve's face was a picture of concern. They had exited the tunnels to a massive cavern, lit here and there with flickering torches. She heard waves crashing against the beach beyond the cave, and gulls calling to one another. There were four armored silhouettes near the mouth of the cave, and a hulking stairwell off to the side of them.

"I'm fine," she said. "I just…" She shook her head, feeling for the knives hidden in her sleeves. _It wasn't me_ , she thought. _It was the Void._

 _It was you,_ something whispered back. _It was always you._

"You just what?"

She looked away. "Nothing, Maeve. Don't worry your empty little head."

It was Vanora who led them now, taking the perilous stairwell two at a time. As girls, she and Hilda had sprinted up and down these stairs with no light at all. She clung to the memory of them as they were, if only to chase away the shadows in her mind. "Come on," she said. "Hilda is waiting."

The halls smelled like wildflowers. Sunlight slanted through the leaded windows set high in the walls, throwing purple and silver slashes across the corridor. She heard laughter echoing from somewhere in the wide, labyrinthine corridors, and pattering feet. Child servants, she thought, enjoying Hilda's lax regard for propriety. Vjorn's widow, Brendalyn Ryswell, had already departed for the Rills; she would not _have_ suffered servants playing in the corridors.

Tapestries lined the walls, spun from the supplest of silks. Past Dovahkiinne dominated every motif. There was Vaskr the Valiant, and Thorkall Thunderfist, and Helga the Heavenly and Fair Ingrid. Soon Vjorn would join them up on the walls.

The alcoves were decorated with furnishings from across the known world, gilded stools from Qarth, cushioned benches from Volantis, and strange rocking seats from beyond the Saffron Straits. Each alcove was guarded by a suit of armor, some silver, some gold, some jade, some bronze. Glass candles in crystalline ensconces lighted the way.

"One might think that Vaskr's sons meant for all of our people to live in this castle," Maeve complained behind her. "They needn't have made it so bloody _big._ "

"You forget, cousin, that giants helped erect these walls. Real giants, not those hairy beasts from beyond the wall."

"Yes, yes, I know the story. When they died their bones were interred in the stone, and their souls forever bound to the crystal spires, so that they might defend in death what they crafted in life."

They climbed another set of stairs, passing servants and guards and courtiers, then walked the length of the castle to a third stair, down a long, narrow hall lined with arching oak wood doors and glass-enclosed casings of ancient weapons and jewels and armor. Vanora recognized some of them from the tales and myths that were told of their old home, before the gods led them to Westeros.

One jewel in particular caught her eye. It always did when she walked this hall, for it seemed that she had caught the jewel's eye as well. Black as old blood, it gleamed with a malicious intelligence that set her hair on end and prickled her skin. There was certainly no giant's soul trapped inside of it. Sometimes, she imagined she could hear it speak to her.

Finally, they came upon Hilda's chambers.

The rooms were large and airy, the high ceiling supported by great beams of ironwood. It was furnished as richly as any room in the castle. The floor was a sea of white and yellow rushes and Myrish rugs, and one of the five hearths spit tendrils of white smoke from smoldering ashes. A gallery overlooked them, supported by fluted columns, connected to a hanging bridge that stretched to the opposite wall, where it ended at an iron studded door of ashen weirwood.

The quartet of double-paned latticework doors in the western wall opened up to a vast balcony that looked down upon Harbortown, veiled by thin curtains that flowed this way in that in the gentle sea breeze that swept through the cracked doors. Twenty people might've slept in Hilda's pillared black oak bed had they been so inclined, and a mammoth could have swaddled itself in the cloth-of-silver curtains that hung from the tester. All of the room's furnishings seemed to have been crafted for giants; Hilda was a tall woman, but she looked like a doll as she lounged against the high-backed settle athwart the bed, its purple pillows stuffed heavily with down.

The coiling stair in the north wall led up to the gallery. Two giggling serving maids came running down it in a tangle of limbs, one green and hairless with big round eyes, the other with skin the color of beaten bark and thick, wooly hair. A third girl came flying after them, waving a toy sword. She was slim, almost scrawny, with dark hair, a long face, and pale grey eyes.

"Come back!" the girl shrilled, eyes alight. "Face me, you knaves!"

The three girls came to a sudden halt when they saw Vanora. Even children knew of her families fell reputation. _Especially_ children.

"What did you get us?" asked Sarra Snow as she pushed passed the others, uncaring of public opinion. Vanora was close to Hilda, and her mother and fathers thought well of her; in Sarra's mind, their opinions were the only ones that mattered.

"New rushes to lay, and flowers for perfumes," Maeve said, stepping past Vanora, "and clams, and crabs, and a hunk of whale butter. Helsif had it all taken down to the kitchens, excepting the rushes. If you run quick, you can watch them boil and squeal!" She splayed her fingers like claws and spoke in a rasping voice.

"Crabs and clams don't squeal," mumbled the green girl, eyes downcast. Hilda had named her Jewel for her sparkling emerald eyes. She, and nearly all her sisters and brothers, were shy as maids.

"You shouldn't eat meat anyway," Nissa chimed in. "Killing is a terrible thing, even if it's only animals." The dark-skinned girl scowled at them, but with her round face and childish features, she only managed to look adorably petulant, even to a black heart like Vanora's.

Nissa had been taken from Naath as little more than a babe, claimed from a slave ship headed to Slaver's Bay, but she still adhered to the way of her homeland, never partaking of meat.

"Have you seen my brother?" asked Sarra, giggling.

Maeve shook her head. "No," Vanora said. "But knowing him, he's down in the yard with Wulfric."

"He's with his fathers," rang a melodious voice. "But I imagine Wulfric is with them as well."

As one, the girls scurried off to go see.

Hilda, who had been laying with her eyes closed, breasts near spilling from a sheer gown that a polite woman might have called indecent, stirred as they drew near. "Dearest sisters," she said in greeting as she sat up, though neither of them was anything of the sort. They weren't even cousins. Maeve did have cousins though, the daughters of her aunts, and they came stomping out of the room with the weirwood door, bickering about the properties of hanging moss and giant's toes.

"Has the council compiled their list of marriage candidates?" Maeve asked. She pulled a stool up alongside the settle and emptied her pickings over the table.

Vanora scowled, hiding her expression by dipping her head as if to examine a loose thread on her gown. She claimed a seat next to Hilda. Their knees brushed, and a jolt raced through her. Desire warred with anger and shame.

"The list is somewhere around here," Hilda said with a wave of her hand. "Helsif recommends I should wed Jon Snow, if I mean to have a child soon."

Vanora bit her lip.

"Is that the plan?" Helgi and Evette said as one. They looked very much like their cousin, only Evette, the youngest of the three, was easily the tallest, of a height with Hilda. "To be wedded," said Helgi, "and bedded," said Evette, "and whelping a babe before the year is out?" Helgi finished.

"Possibly," Hilda admitted. "The line must continue." She turned her piercing gaze to Vanora. "What do you think I should do, V?"

Vanora didn't trust herself to speak. There it was again, that surge of roiling black, and a strange heat, and a deep, almost painful longing. "I… I think you should do whatever you think is best."

Hilda looked oddly disappointed by her words. "I've been doing that," she said. "Dealing with the messes left to me by Grandfather. Dealing with Thorunn's ambitions. Between your's and Thorfinn's efforts, I should have the freedom to choose my heart over my duty."

Vanora shrugged. Hilda wrapped her arms about her shoulders, and leaned against her, sighing. Her golden hair tickled Vanora's nose; she smelled of vanilla and lavender. Like hope and happiness. Like love. Like hate.

Dark urges surged in her heart, but the heat of Hilda's skin banished them.

Her shame remained.

"You are my dearest friend, Vanora," Hilda whispered in her ear. Vanora withheld a shudder. "And I know that I have asked much from you, of late; too much, I am beginning to think. I was too blinded by duty to realize how badly my requests affected you. For what it's worth, I am sorry." Her hair shifted; Vanora felt warm breath against her cheek. And then lips, pressed to her skin, branding her.

"I forgive you," Vanora managed, stomach twisted in knots. "But… you still mean to make the request. Don't you." She grimaced; that was supposed to be a question, not an accusation.

Hilda sighed again, absently stroking her fingers through Vanora's hair. _I hate her,_ Vanora thought. _I love her._ "Maeve, Evette, Helgi? Might Vanora and I have a bit of privacy?"

"You can have more than a bit," Maeve said, having separated and bundled her pickings into whatever strange system she had dreamed up, then swept them back into her pouch. "If you need us, my sisters and I will be down below the kitchens. These ingredients certainly won't brew themselves. Many blessings, oh beloved Dovahkiin!" She curtseyed with a flourish, and her sisters repeated the farewell.

Hilda laughed, a ringing chime like crystal bells and bird song, and shooed them on. Vanora's skin tingled; the knot in her stomach tightened until it hurt. She thought not of blood, or darkness, or the Void, but Rorlund, and his strong arms and rumbling voice and tender kisses. She thought of how inadequate they seemed in hindsight, sitting now with Hilda.

Her love had not soured, she thought. Despite the bitter resentment and biting jealousy, it had only grown. Perhaps… perhaps she needed the Void to take her feelings away. She couldn't keep going on like this.

Or maybe the Void wasn't splintering her soul – maybe it was only unleashing what was buried within?

The Glenmoril girls swept from the room in a swirl of fiery-blond hair and reedy voices. Vanora could hear them bickering as the door swung shut. Then it closed with a heavy thud, and she and Hilda were left alone.

"Something is troubling you," Hilda said. She leaned back against the pillows, releasing Vanora's shoulders. "Not the Void. Something else."

Vanora looked away, shivering at the loss. "No. It's nothing."

"I don't believe you. Ever since you returned from the Dreadfort, you've been… different. What is it, Vanora?" A beat, and then, "Look at me."

Vanora lurched to her feet, intent on escape. All her cruelty and coldness crumbled in the face of Hilda's light. She couldn't tell her, she wouldn't understand, she couldn't –

Long, corded arms embraced her from behind, pulling her close. She felt Hilda pressed tightly to her back, felt Hilda's face against her hair, felt Hilda's hands caress her hips, slender fingers tracing wide, slow circles. " **Tell me,** " Hilda demanded. Then, softer, " _Please._ "

Vanora melted against her. _I hate you. I love you._ "I killed Ramsay," she murmured. "He'd poisoned Rorlund, alluded to poisoning Domeric… and Roose… Roose just sat and watched it all."

"You've killed men before."

She shook her head. "Not like this. This wasn't quick or clean. I made it last. His screams…" Her breath hitched, and she shuddered. "They were so _sweet._ "

Hilda stroked her hair. Vanora leaned into her touch as a dog might lean into the touch of its master, offering no resistance when Hilda led her over to the vast featherbed. She lay against the mattress; her breath hitched again when Hilda curled next to her, arms wound about her middle. It had been so long since they shared a bed – since before the Dreadfort.

"I'm a vile person, Hilda. You should send me away. To Windhelm, or Dawnfort. The Void… what if it takes too much? What if it's already taken too much? What if it turns me against you?" It was already trying, she thought. Trying to drive a wench between them, to taint her feelings, to prey on her insecurities, tearing her, ripping her.

"It hasn't, and it won't," Hilda said. "The Void is no different from Sovngarde; neither is truly meant for the living to visit. They feed on our doubts, on our fears. They test us. If you cannot trust in yourself to remain strong, then trust in me to keep you safe." Her voice softened to a breathy whisper. "Give me your heart, Vanora, and I will see that it comes to no harm."

Vanora turned to face her. Trust in Hilda? She could do that. She could do it easily. How had she ever doubted? She loved her.

She ignored the traitorous voice that whispered that Hilda was using her, like she always had, playing her, toying with her. _Hilda can be ruthless,_ the voice whispered. _She knows cruelty. She keeps it hidden. She doesn't love you. No one could love something like you. You hate her._

Tentatively, she reached out and cupped Hilda's face. Her thumb brushed against the corner of her mouth. The voice snarled, raved, thrashed. Hilda smiled, kissed her fingers. Vanora's heart near burst. "Call your mother to Winterfell," Hilda said. "And send word to the Blood Flower. Tell her it is time."

Vanora took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and fell into a churning sea of oily shadows. _Hear me, Night Mother. Hear me, Blood Flower. Hear me…_


End file.
